as defiled by that word, and she wished to
cleanse it. It was no affectation, as, with some folk, you might have
thought it. It was not a studied act. She did it, I do believe,
unconsciously. And it was a gesture marvelously expressive. It spoke
more eloquently of her feelings than many words could have done.

She had seen the Germans! Aye! She had seen them come, in 1914, in
the first days of the war, rolling past in great, gray waves, for
days and days, as if the flood would never cease to roll. She had
seen them passing, with their guns, in those first proud days of the
war, when they had reckoned themselves invincible, and been so sure
of victory. She knew what cruelties, what indignities, they had put
upon the helpless people the war had swept into their clutch. She
knew the defilements of which they had been guilty.

Nor was that the first time she had seen Germans. They had come
before she was so old, though even then she had not been a young
girl--in the war of 1870, when Europe left brave France to her fate,
because the German spirit and the German plan were not appreciated or
understood. Thank God the world had learned its lesson by 1914, when
the Hun challenged it again, so that the challenge was met and taken
up, and France was not left alone to bear the brunt of German greed
and German hate.

She hated the Germans, that old French nun. She was religious; she
knew the teachings of her church. She knew that God says we must love
our enemies. But He could not expect us to love His enemies.

Albert, when we came to it, we found a ruin indeed. The German guns
had beaten upon it until it was like a rubbish heap in the backyard
of hell. Their malice had wrought a ruin here almost worse than that
at Arras. Only one building had survived although it was crumbling to
ruin. That was a church, and, as we approached it, we could see, from
the great way off, a great gilded figure of the Holy Virgin, holding
in her arms the infant Christ.

The figure leaned at such an angle, high up against the tottering
wall of the church, that it seemed that it must fall at the next
moment, even as we stared at it. But--it does not fall. Every breath
of wind that comes sets it to swaying, gently. When the wind rises to
a storm it must rock perilously indeed. But still it stays there,
hanging like an inspiration straight from Heaven to all who see it.
The peasants who gaze upon it each day in reverent awe whisper to
you, if you ask